In 2014, only one in 11 Ohio children (9 percent) who received free and reduced-price school lunches received meals in the summer through the Summer Food Service Program. What happens to children whose families don't have the resources to make up for school meals on a summer day?

Childhood is no time to be hungry. That is easy to understand on an emotional level. On a practical level, there are high costs associated with child hunger. Food-insecure children are two-thirds more likely to be at developmental risk. A hungry child is less likely to succeed in a classroom and later in life. Food insecurity among children is associated with a higher risk of poor health and hospitalizations. Health care costs related to hunger nationwide have been estimated at $130 billion per year.

Government programs aimed at helping charities address child hunger are up for reauthorization when the current law expires in September. The last Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act included an amendment that resulted in improvements to school meal programs and the expansion of after-school programs to all 50 states.

The Greater Cleveland Food Bank will provide meals to low-income children this summer at 88 community sites including Boys and Girls clubs, Salvation Army sites, schools, church-sponsored programs and libraries due to a simple change in the law that enables a program sponsor to operate more than 25 sites. We now can make further improvements and we cannot afford to do anything less. We need to strengthen the law by passing a reauthorization bill that offers more flexibility to enable communities to reach and serve more children in need.

Streamlining regulations and aligning program requirements for community-based providers who operate both after-school meals and summer feeding programs could eliminate administrative hurdles and paperwork, resulting in more children being served in the crucial summer months.

Families would benefit from waiving the requirement that all meals be consumed on site. Many feeding sites are in areas of concentrated need, but there isn't a site down the street from every needy family. Some families have to travel long distances to reach the nearest program, especially in rural areas, and the round-trip fuel cost may outweigh the cost of the breakfast or lunch a child receives.

Instead, what if the program sent a child home with several days' worth of meals once a week? Likewise, in an after-school setting, the ability to send meals home would ensure that children are fed even when the program is closed on weekends or holidays.

By making sensible changes, we could make a difference to ensure that low-income children are being fed adequately.

The urgency to strengthen the reauthorization bill becomes clear when we look at the conditions of children in Northeast Ohio. Data from 2013 show that Cuyahoga County was home to more food-insecure children than any other Ohio county, and too often we fail to recognize the hidden food insecurity among households well above the poverty line. This is a critical issue for Northeast Ohio.

The Greater Cleveland Food Bank and many other organizations are working to close the summer meal gap for families in our community and to provide good, nutritious meals throughout the other seasons, as well. However, it is the responsibility of our entire community to seize the opportunity to improve child nutrition through this federal legislation.

We thank our members of Congress for their support and urge them to use this vehicle once again to ensure the health and well-being of Ohio's children through access to adequate, nutritious food.

Kristin Warzocha is president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.